Liberty Hill (Western Tide Series)

by Heisinger, Sonja

  She called his name once, twice, but it was not enough to wake him.

  So, lacking any ability to restrain herself, she slapped him.

  Perhaps insanity had claimed her after all, manifesting in the form of desperation.

  “Wake up, Mr. Flynn!” she cried hoarsely, stunned at the sound of her own pathetic voice. “It is important that you wake up! You must drink!”

  She waited for a moment, watching to see if some member of his body moved. An eyelid? A finger? A toe?

  In the darkness, she could not be entirely sure of what she saw, or didn’t see. So she called to him again.

  “Rouse yourself, Lucius!”

  She stopped and stared hard at him.

  He was so still. So impossibly still.

  “Lucius?”

  She leaned over his face, listening for breath.

  It did not come.

  Down the hall, someone moaned. It was a dreadful sound, but all Evelyn could hear was Lucius’ silence.

  She felt pinpricks of trepidation spread across her skin.

  No. No, he couldn’t be. He was not…

  “No,” she said aloud. “No, Lucius! Open your eyes, you mongrel! Don’t toy with me. This is not a game. Wake up! You are not allowed to do this. Do you hear me? You are not allowed to do this! I will not let you!”

  She slapped him again and again, until the dismal sight of his sunken face began to blur from the burning tears that welled within her eyes.

  “Lucius!” she called to him again. “I do not permit you to give up your life! Don’t you rot on me. You are stronger than this!”

  She took up the flagon and poured it into his mouth, but the wine pooled and spilled over his cheeks.

  Evelyn slapped him once more.

  “Drink it!” she sobbed. “You must drink it, Lucius!”

  Nothing. Not a gurgle. Not a stir.

  Evelyn threw the flagon aside and reached for the towel. The oils. Everything. She would give everything she had to bring him back. To wake him up from sleep.

  None of it, however, was any good.

  She sank back, lingering on the brink of defeat, her hand pressed over her mouth in disbelief. Her tears were hot as they spilled over her fingers.

  What had made her think she could save him? When had she become so arrogant as to believe she could make any difference in whether he lived or died? Lucius was ill. He was not getting any better, and she had wasted these many years with the selfish notion that he would live forever, that she could go on hating him until she saw fit to forgive him.

  And now, and now…

  She could not think it. She could not bear it. If Lucius was gone, then she had lost every last piece of herself.

  No, she had said she would not allow it, and she wouldn’t.

  “Lucius!” she cried. “You must tell me what to do. Oh God, I cannot bear it. Oh God! Tell me what to do!”

  Suddenly a new sound pealed through the hall. It was soft at first, and Evelyn questioned whether or not she had even heard it.

  It came again. A small cry, and not belonging to a man.

  It was the cry of a girl.

  Evelyn’s own cries ceased as she listened, and a small spark of hope was birthed within her, for there was only one girl this could be.

  The impervious one. The one with the healing hands.

  Josephine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Evelyn rose and followed the sound of the girl’s voice. She discovered her at the end of the hall, sitting on the floor with a man cradled in her arms. As Evelyn drew closer, she realized that this man was without life, and the child’s tears were falling heavily onto his withered body. Josephine rocked him, back and forth, her eyes trained on his face.

  “Josephine,” Evelyn said, her voice barely above a whisper. She did not want to startle the girl.

  Slowly, Josephine looked up at her with an agonized expression of love and sorrow. Evelyn’s heart nearly broke at the sight. Had Josephine known this man? Or was she simply moved to compassion by the tragic death of a stranger?

  Whoever he was to the girl, he was gone, and Josephine was needed elsewhere.

  “I believe he has forfeited his spirit, Josephine. There is nothing more you can do for him.”

  The maid’s face tightened with the onslaught of more tears.

  “Josephine, please, come with me. I have great need of you.”

  The fire of the lantern illuminated Josephine’s eyes, and her tears glistened like sparks in the dark.

  “Lucius is terribly sick,” Evelyn told her, her voice breaking. “I believe he is dying, and I do not know how to tend to him. Will you help me?”

  The girl nodded, another sob escaping her throat. She looked once more upon the man and removed herself from beneath him, releasing him gently onto the floor.

  Evelyn led her away, but the girl stopped at each sickly victim, kneeling in puddles of excrement and touching enflamed foreheads with her cool fingertips. Some of the men sighed in response, and others made no sound at all, to which she wailed anew.

  This could go on all night, as there were sick people everywhere.

  “Come, Josephine!” Evelyn pleaded. “We must be quick! Lucius will die if we do not hurry.”

  She did not say, could not say, that he might be dead already.

  Finally, at what seemed the close of a hundred years, Josephine came to Lucius, where he remained unmoved from where Evelyn had left him. Josephine knelt beside him and touched his face, her sad eyes dripping tears onto his still body.

  “I have nothing to give him but this,” Evelyn said, offering the flagon of wine to the girl. “It is not much, but it was all I could find.”

  Josephine took the flagon and released the cork. She steadily lowered it to Lucius’ mouth and poured a little onto his lips.

  The liquid came out clear.

  Evelyn started, then leaned in closer for a better look.

  It was not wine. It was water.

  That weasel of a man had lied to her, and she had believed him. His lips were even stained! Either he was too drunk to know the difference, or he had wanted to make her believe it was something other than what she wanted. But she had smelled it, had been repelled by its sour scent; was it merely a residue? She had seen it, had watched it spill out of Lucius’ mouth; was it the lighting that made it appear dark? Whatever the explanation, it was the exact medicine Lucius needed.

  And this time, it was not spilling over.

  Lucius was taking the draught, because Lucius was alive.

  Evelyn heard a woman laughing, and she realized the woman was herself.

  The wine had been worth fifteen dollars. If she had known this was water, there was no price she would not have paid.

  Josephine waited a moment, then took Lucius’ hand in her own. She brought it to her face and kissed it, then poured some more water into his mouth.

  He received it with a low moan, his eyes darting open with sudden alacrity. In waking, the girl’s silhouette was the first thing he saw.

  “Lucius!” Evelyn cried. “Oh my God! Lucius, you are awake!”

  He did not reply, did not hear or see anything but Josephine. She was naught but a shadow, her skin melting into the dark; yet somehow, he knew she returned his gaze. His every fiber could feel it, as if the very hope that burned within her had scorched his soul, igniting the life within him. His heart pumped with renewed fervency, his skin tingled, his bones ached. Oxygen burned hot as it entered his ravaged throat, progressing towards his eager lungs. His stomach, purged of every morsel, was pierced with the knowledge of emptiness.

  Hunger. By God, he felt hunger.

  Lucius began to mutter incoherently, his words misshapen products of a confused and bewildered mind.

  “What did he say?” Evelyn asked, eager to understand this unfolding miracle.

  Josephine pulled a crust of bread from the folds of her apron and offered it to the patient. Lucius received a large, happy bite, chewing slowly but ra
pturously. The single action required what little energy he possessed, so he sighed and allowed his eyelids to succumb to the gravity of weariness.

  “Good gracious! He is taking food! Josephine, does this mean he shall recover?”

  Too impatient for a response, Evelyn knelt beside Josephine and placed her hand against Lucius’ cheek.

  It was cool. The fever had broken.

  For a moment, all was still as Evelyn fought to comprehend what had happened, what was happening still. She was afraid to hope that perhaps the end had come- and victory along with it- when Josephine touched her and instantly, all was certain.

  The girl’s tears had ceased and she wore a triumphant smile.

  Lucius would live.

  Evelyn drew a long breath and sank once more against the opposite wall.

  “My God, I was so frightened. I was so terribly frightened.”

  She closed her eyes. What time was it? She could feel the heaviness of the hour, but with relief came a small stream of emotion and the buoyancy of gratitude.

  “Thank you, Josephine.”

  She could not remember a time in her life when she did not know him. She tried to think of what the world would look like without him, but she realized she did not want to know. And it did not matter. She did not have to wonder about that anymore. He was not invincible, or immortal, but he was alive.

  A few doors down, someone emerged from their stateroom to retch. Startled, Evelyn’s eyes fluttered open to find Josephine looking back at her inquisitively.

  The girl’s form was tense, her posture altering with the readiness to move on. She seemed to be requesting Evelyn’s permission to leave. There were other patients, other men who needed her.

  Nervously, Evelyn looked at Lucius.

  “Do you think me capable of nursing him without you?” she asked Josephine. “I have no idea… I do not know what to do.”

  Josephine smiled and nodded, then continued tirelessly down the hall. In the dim light, her pale nightgown gave her the appearance of a ghost, her feet mingling with the shadows and disappearing beneath her.

  For a moment, Evelyn simply stared at Lucius. His face gave off a pallid and frightful glow in the lamplight. Already his body had begun to wither, his cheeks and hands skeletal from the tremendous loss of nourishment. He lay limp and pitiful, mercifully drunk with sleep.

  Evelyn knelt beside him, aware that her expensive robe and nightgown were soiled beyond repair. She took up the cloth once more and began to clean Lucius’ face, but before long, her knees grew weary of the position, as the floor was wooden and coarse. She arranged herself beside him, further destroying her attire, and wrapped her arms around him, hoisting him onto her lap as Josephine had done with the man before him.

  Lucius’ full weight was heavier than she anticipated. At this proximity, even his head was large, his shoulders broad. He had the body of a man, yet in this piteous, unconscious state, he possessed the vulnerability of a child. Evelyn gently ran the cloth along his forehead, tracing the line of his brow. She was astonished to see so much of the boy she had once known and so little of the haughty, vain young man he had become in latter years.

  As she cleaned the refuse from his skin, she realized that a song from their youth was streaming through her mind. She began to hum it quietly, but the melody was overcome by the other sounds of the hall. Evelyn hummed a little louder, then began to sing it out.

  She sang for a long while, and the song was not merely heard in Lucius’ dreams. Throughout the hall, the men’s cries turned to sighs as they listened rapturously to the rare voice of a woman, an angel in the dark.

  When morning dawned, a soft blue light filtered into the hall, illuminating the faces of those who were suffering, as well as those who had ceased to suffer sometime in the past two days. Ashen and weary, a doctor and two other men emerged from the infirmary to observe the state of things. They began removing the bodies of the dead, and found that those yet living, whom they had set out to make comfortable, had already been made so at the diligent hands of a slight English maid.

  The vision of Josephine and Evelyn was almost more than the poor doctor could bear, for his nerves were riddled with exhaustion, and he had little strength to suppress the tears that came to his eyes. He expressed his gratitude for their services and proceeded to excuse them from the hall, for he wished to examine the survivors.

  “Go up on deck and take a draught of the clean morning,” he told them.

  One of the men helped Evelyn to her feet, as the bottom half of her body had gone numb some hours before. He assisted her from the hall and when they emerged into the early light of day, she squinted against the brightness and filled her lungs with the sweet saline air.

  Light. So there was such a thing.

  The small journey was taxing and Evelyn sought a crate to rest upon, when a nearby gentleman appraised her unsightly appearance.

  “What happened to her?” he asked her escort.

  “She’s been tending the sick,” the man replied. “Go and fetch the poor girl a cup of coffee, would you?” He turned to Evelyn. “I think your little friend went to find you a change of clothes, miss. Tireless, ain’t she? I will be sure to let her know where you are. Just stay put, you hear?”

  Evelyn nodded and the man departed.

  Josephine quietly returned to the stateroom, her footsteps light and silent. The others slept heavily as she slipped out of her soiled frock and apron, bundling them in a sack to be thrown into the sea. She changed into fresh clothes, gathering an extra set for Evelyn and a clean, damp cloth for Lucius.

  She exited the room as stealthily as she entered, shutting the door softly behind her. She steeled herself against the fetid odor of the hall, compassion washing over her anew. She surveyed the scene, taking in the work of the doctor and his assistants. Several bodies had been covered with sheets, and the dismal sight of them brought a new wave of emotion over the girl, forcing her to lean against the wall beneath its weight. She shed a few more tears, then looked on, noticing that the survivors were in the process of being cleaned and tended. Lucius was among the first the doctor had seen, his head propped up on a pillow and his legs covered with a wool blanket. A bucket of water with a ladle was positioned near his arm, ready to drink.

  Josephine went to him and placed the cool cloth upon his forehead. He stirred and opened his eyes, recognition lighting his face. With a speed he did not know he possessed, he reached out and took hold of her hand, his grip sure but weak.

  “It’s you,” he murmured, his voice broken. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry, so the girl took up the ladle and held it to his lips. As he could not lift his head, she used her other hand to assist him.

  When he had drunk, he sighed.

  “You tended me last night, didn’t you?” he asked.

  Josephine nodded.

  He recalled how she had overwhelmed his senses, though he had never actually seen her. He thought he had seen her, had felt her presence like one feels the rays of the sun. He had known it was her, as one knows light by the redness that seeps through an eyelid when it is shut.

  “I felt you,” he told her.

  He looked at her with heavy eyes, willing them to stay open as they fought for rest. He remembered the first time he had seen her, the first time he had ignored her. She was only a child, and he could not even remember her name.

  He studied her face; so soft, so young, so gentle. Warm, yet cool, like the transition of winter into spring. And then those eyes… so green, so deep: like Ireland, like life itself.

  “I could not see you, but I felt you. I knew you were there. And I heard you. I heard you singing.”

  At this, the girl shook her head.

  Of course. She was a mute. Did he know nothing about her?

  She held his left hand and with her thumb, she traced the outline of his third finger, where his wedding band had once made its brief appearance.

  He met her gaze with a question, to which she nodded. />
  She knew. But how could she know? Had Evelyn told her?

  Evelyn. It was Evelyn who had sung to him. But why? She had forgotten the words, had left them in Ireland along with any semblance of love she had ever felt for him. They had grown apart. Why would she have sung over him? Why did she come to him? She could have been infected. She could have died! He had done nothing to deserve such an act of sacrifice, and indeed, he had not believed Evelyn capable of one.

  He turned his face away from Josephine’s innocent stare. Her eyes were too pure to see him for who he really was: the boy who had wounded Evelyn when she was just a child, the young man who had lost his head and gotten her father killed.

  How did one apologize for such things? How did one recover a friendship lost?

  He sensed Josephine’s earnest gaze and felt the more wretched for it.

  “Thank you for what you’ve done,” he told her dismissively, closing his eyes. “You may leave me now. I am in need of rest.”

  After a turn about the ship, two cups of coffee, and a fresh set of clothing, Evelyn felt like a new woman. The nightmare had passed with the breaking of dawn. Lucius was on the mend. Together with Josephine, they had fought and won the battle of cholera.

  The fog of exhaustion had cleared from her mind, and her thoughts raced to reconcile the traumas of night to the restoration of day. From the moment Lucius fell ill till the moment she left him sleeping in the hall, she had encountered such a vast array of emotions as she had not known since her father’s death: fear, anxiety, angst, pain, and sorrow. But when the fever broke, there were other emotions that for years had been removed from her: hope, happiness, anticipation, and triumph.

  Evelyn’s muscles were heavy from exertion, but tense with caffeine. She felt tired but victorious, and the coffee had loosened her tongue. Beside her, Josephine sipped at her own coffee, eyes trained on the sky and reflecting the pearly clouds of daybreak.

  Evelyn regarded her with admiration.

  “I have never known anyone like you,” she told her.